David Stern, NBA better get serious about performance-enhancing drugs

League drug-testing policy is a joke

May 24, 2011|By Mike Bianchi, SPORTS COMMENTARY

Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose, the NBA's Most Valuable Player, said the other day that he misunderstood a question from an ESPN reporter who quoted him as saying performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) are a major problem in professional basketball.

"It (PEDs) is huge," Rose was quoted as saying, "and I think we need a level playing field, where nobody has that advantage over the next person."

After the controversial quote began circulating, Rose released a statement saying, "Let me be clear, I do not believe there is a performance-enhancing drug problem in the NBA."

Well, since Rose won't say it, allow me:

I believe there is a performance-enhancing drug problem in the NBA.

Then again, I believe there is a performance-enhancing drug problem in any sport – baseball, football, cycling, track and field, golf, bowling, etc – where you gain an advantage if you can run faster, pedal harder, jump higher, hit the ball further or recover from injury quicker.

Translation: Every sport.

If there's a skill to be enhanced, you better be believe today's elite-level athletes will find a chemical that can enhance it.

And it's sheer naiveté to think the pro basketball is immune as commissioner David Stern has arrogantly alluded to in the past. We have given the NBA a free pass because, for the most part, the league's athletes aren't hulking, muscle-bound monsters. This, of course, is an archaic,1980s way of looking at PEDs.

In today's world, high-tech designer steroids can be used regularly without growing muscle mass. Besides building strength, they are used to help the body recover quicker from strenuous activity, heal faster from injury, increase endurance. Cyclists, marathon runners and baseball pitchers aren't gargantuan, bulked-up behemoths either, but many of them have benefitted from the designer drugs and growth hormone available today.

Why would anyone think the NBA – where a premium is put on running fast and jumping high – would be exempt from the PED epidemic that has infiltrated all levels and all types of sports? Why would anyone believe a sport like the NBA – where players' bodies take a nightly pounding and must recover quickly – is somehow purer and more pristine than all the rest?

This is laughable. I've said this before and I'll say it again: NBA players make more money and are competing for fewer roster spots than any of the other big-time professional sports. Why wouldn't a player take high-tech PEDs in order to gain a guaranteed $100 million contract?

Look no further than right here in Orlando, where Rashard Lewis, he of the inflated $120 million contract, was nabbed for taking a banned substance two years ago and suspended for 10 games by the NBA. Lewis is a rarity in that he is one of the few NBA players who have ever actually been nailed. But there's good reason why NBA players almost never get caught. It's not because they don't take PEDs; it's because the NBA drug-testing policy is such a joke.

Shaun Assael, who wrote Steroid Nation, one of the definitive books on the rise of performance-enhancing drugs in this country, says NBA drug-testing is in the "dark ages" when compared to other sports. He's right. The fact that the NBA doesn't test players during the offseason makes the league's policy virtually irrelevant.

"If you look at the NBA's policy, it's at least a decade behind Major League Baseball and the NFL," said Assael. "… "If you don't have strong testing, you're tempting players to use. Where there's temptation, there are going to be people who can't resist it.

"Look at the recent history of all this – congressional hearings, teary-eyed confessions, grand jury testimony. Baseball has gone through it. The NFL, to an extent, has gone through it. What league would want to go through it again?"

The NBA seems like an obvious choice.

mbianchi@tribune.comRead Mike Bianchi's Open Mike blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/openmike and listen to his Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9 a.m. on 740-AM.